Blackpool hits back over pregnant smokers

A councillor in Blackpool, which has England’s highest smoking rate among pregnant women, has defended the town’s record.

Government figures show the resort has the most pregnant smokers per head of population.
Blackpool Council said smoking levels in the town had fallen from 33% five years ago to 27.2% now.

Blackpool Councillor Eddie Collett, the Cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said: “In Blackpool, smoking in pregnancy numbers are falling. We have seen significant improvement since 2010.”

He said they needed to continue the positive work to ensure mothers and babies were protected from harm caused by smoking.

“There is still a way to go,” he added. “However, I am pleased that we are moving in the right direction.”
Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at Ash, said the data came from the government’s Smoking at the Time of Delivery data.

She said it was unfair to single out Blackpool as they have done some “great work” and one of the reasons the figures may seem higher is because they are so good at recording the data and “not every other part of the country is quite as scrupulous.”

She added there are lower rates of smoking in more affluent areas and higher in areas that are less affluent, and although Blackpool has invested a lot they “have such a mountain to climb”.

Assembly Member Peter Black has criticised Swansea Council for including a question on e-cigarettes in a public consultation over banning smoking in parks, beaches and outside schools.

The authority’s online survey asks whether people think they should be included in the voluntary ban.

Mr Black said a recent report by Public Health England concluded that e-cigarettes had the potential to help smokers quit and that they were around 95 per cent less harmful to the smoker than smoking tobacco.

He also said that a recent Welsh Health Survey disproved the theory that e-cigarettes were a gateway to smoking tobacco, finding that every current vaper asked had smoked previously.

Coventry: Passenger ordered to pay £642 for throwing cigarette out of car window

A car passenger has been ordered to pay £642 after she was spotted throwing her cigarette end out of the window.

She was fined £220 in her absence during a hearing at Nuneaton Magistrates’ Court on Monday. Greensmith was also ordered to pay a further £150 court costs, a £22 victim surcharge and North Warwickshire Borough Council’s £250 legal costs.

She did not respond to an initial fixed penalty notice of £80 or to further reminders from the council. She also ignored a request from the council to attend an interview under caution.

Australia: Queensland to widen smoking bans

Health Minister Cameron Dick said proposed new laws would ban smoking in and around childcare centres, children’s sporting events, bus stops and other areas.

It is already illegal to smoke inside pubs, clubs, restaurants and workplaces in Queensland.
Other areas such as major sports stadiums, outdoor eating areas and patrolled beaches are also off limits.

But Mr Dick said further restrictions are needed because more than 3700 Queenslanders are still dying each year because of smoking.

PROPOSED NEW SMOKING LAWS:
* Smoking banned at or near children’s organised sporting events, childcare centres, skate parks, aged care facilities, pedestrian precincts near state government buildings, national parks, public swimming pools, outdoor pedestrian malls and public transport waiting points like bus stops
* Smoke-free buffers to be increased from four metres to five metres outside government, commercial and non-residential buildings
* Local councils empowered to ban smoking in other public spaces
* Ban on sales of tobacco products by pop-up retailers like those at music festivals

South Korea: 1 in 10 women in their 20s smoke: study

About 10 per cent of Korean women in their 20s are smokers, accounting for the largest portion of all female smokers in South Korea, a government study shows.

While Korean women’s smoking prevalence rates are quite low compared to other developed nations, research findings show that the rates may rise in the future if young women in their 20s as well as female teenagers continue to smoke as they grow older.

As of last year, 4.3% of all Korean women aged 15 or older smoked, which was far lower than the average smoking prevalence rate for women in the Organisation for Economic and Development countries, which stood at 15.7%.

However, the smoking prevalence rate for Korean female teenagers, which stood at 5.7%, was higher than those for all age groups except women in their 20s and 30s.

A not-for-profit organisation – Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) – has warned that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is fast emerging as the lung cancer capital of the country with 26.6 percent of population consuming tobacco in one form or the other.

In the midst of this worrying trend, a debate has been triggered whether PDP-BJP led coalition government is escalating the problem.

Clearly violating a tobacco control treaty, which India signed with World Health Organisation (WHO) almost a decade ago, the state government two months back allocated the task of rejuvenation of centrally located Pratap Park in the commercial hub of Lal Chowk in Srinagar to tobacco company Godfrey and Philips.

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